Did Allen Weinstein Get the Alger Hiss Story Wrong?

Mr. Lowenthal is professor emeritus University College London and author of books on heritage and history. He is the brohter of John Lowenthal, who is mentioned in this article. John Lowenthal passed away in 2003.

Allen Weinstein is now the Archivist of the United States. Despite concerns over the politics of the appointment and Weinstein’s scholarly record, the inaugural drew accolades. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who administered the oath of office, called Weinstein “a scholar whose work I have long admired.” Harvard’s Daniel Aaron termed him “always a sound historian, and always preoccupied with evidence.”1

Preoccupied with evidence, yes; but how? And how sound a historian? Data newly brought to light during a libel suit lost by Alexander Vassiliev, his former collaborator, reanimates doubts about Weinstein’s scholarship. Worse, it suggests suppression of archival evidence that did not suit him. Jon Wiener’s Historians in Trouble (2005) sums up earlier charges against Weinstein: misquoting informants in his book Perjury (1977); repeating misrepresentations in the 1997 revised edition; never fulfilling his long-standing promise to make crucial evidence publicly available. Weinstein’s The Haunted Wood (1999), co-authored with Vassiliev, was censured for slipshod use of sources even by some who concurred with its conclusions.

Weinstein’s Perjury is widely held to confirm Whittaker Chambers’s 1948 charge that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. Jailed for perjury, Hiss spent the rest of his life (he died in 1996) trying to prove his innocence. Three 1990s’ developments transformed perceptions of the Hiss case along with 1930s and 1940s American-Soviet relations in general:

*Searches in KGB archives by Russian authorities a year after the Soviet collapse found no evidence that Hiss had ever been a Soviet agent. As other intelligence archives remained closed, this exoneration is persuasive but not conclusive.

*Translations of decrypted Soviet cables from Washington to Moscow made public in the mid-1990s—the so-called Venona papers—for some appeared to bear out, for others to refute, Hiss’s complicity.

*Crown Publishers gave an ex-KGB outfit a large sum for privileged (and as it turned out sole) access to heretofore secret archives by Weinstein’s Russian co-author Vassiliev from 1994 to 1996. As presented in The Haunted Wood and the revised edition of Perjury, data from those archives are held to substantiate Hiss’s guilt.

That they fail to do so was shown by John Lowenthal in 2000. A Hiss supporter whose documentary film “The Trials of Alger Hiss” (1979) won international acclaim, Lowenthal documented how The Haunted Wood misinterpreted sources, ignored exculpatory evidence, and arbitrarily substituted “Hiss” in place of KGB and Venona code and covernames. In “excerpts of KGB documents from which they have selectively replaced covernames with their own notion of the real names, the reader can not even tell what covernames have been deleted, because the co-authors assign two or three different covernames to the same person, for example, two for Hiss, ‘Lawyer’ and ‘Ales’.” Moreover, “the co-authors’ references and ... statements cannot be checked or verified by anyone else,” wrote Lowenthal. “Because they derive from excerpts ‘quoted’ out of context from KGB files closed to other researchers, the[y] offer no credible support for the proposition . . . that Hiss was [an] espionage agent.” 2

Stung by this critique, Vassiliev, now resident in London, sued Lowenthal’s publisher for libel in June 2001. He lost. A British High Court jury in June 2003 ruled that Vassiliev had indeed been defamed––Lowenthal’s essay shamed him. In British libel law plaintiff can win even if defamation is unintended. But in this case the criticism was deemed to be justified, fair comment given the evidence, a conclusion honestly reached that merited no reprisal.3

Troublesome for Weinstein’s scholarly repute are papers Vassiliev brought to the trial to buttress his own credibility, and additional facts thereby disclosed. The papers are photocopies of extracts Vassiliev transcribed from KGB files, or rather retranscribed from the floppy discs he had smuggled out of Moscow in 1996. Far from strengthening the case against Hiss, however, the previously unseen data call into question evidence earlier adduced against him.

Gorsky’s use of the code-name ‘Leonard’ for Alger Hiss is a devastating blow to the incriminating thesis that Hiss was ‘Ales.’ Gorsky knew who Ales was. If Ales was Hiss he would have said so in this list. But he does not. Instead he assigns him the cover name ‘Leonard.’ The Gorsky Memo also undermines the thesis that Hiss was a spy at all. Why? Because if Hiss-alias-Leonard was a spy, one would expect to find some other reference to Hiss-alias-Leonard to crop up in the KGB files. But it does not. And the codename ‘Leonard’ given to Hiss by Gorsky appears nowhere in The Haunted Wood. There and in the revised Perjury Hiss is always named ‘Ales’ or ‘Lawyer.’

Strangely, Gorsky’s list of names is neither quoted nor cited in The Haunted Wood. “Why is he not in the book?” “I don’t know. I don’t really know,” was Vassiliev’s reiterated response.5 The Gorsky List appears to be the most pertinent document about Hiss that Vassiliev came across in the KGB files. Why would Weinstein, whose assault on Hiss made his fame, not even refer in the revised edition of Perjury to what some consider (though I think mistakenly) a critical piece of evidence against him?6

The Gorksy List’s omission from The Haunted Wood is all the more strange because its inclusion would have enabled the authors to supply real names for many individuals whose code names appear in the book as ‘unknown’ or ‘omitted’ or were unidentified, or whose real names are given no code names.7 Why was such salient data left out? Weinstein and Vassiliev claimed The Haunted Wood gave “a more complete and accurate account of Soviet intelligence” than any to date.8 Had they been genuinely committed to that aim, they would have published the Gorsky List and discussed its implications. But they did not.

Could it be that Weinstein never saw it? Could Vassiliev have failed to translate it? Hardly. Vassiliev is mystified that it did not appear in book. He translated as much raw material as he could: “I put every document in ... to let Allen make up his own mind ... To preserve his scientific correctness I wanted him to read as much of the documents as possible.”9 Conclusively, The Haunted Wood quotes from the same KGB memorandum that contains and immediately precedes the Gorsky List, transcribed on the same page of Vassiliev’s notebook.10 Weinstein must have seen it and recognized its import.

Did Weinstein fear that including or even mentioning the Gorsky List would undercut his accusations against Hiss? Hiss could conceivably have been a spy without being ‘Ales,’ but for Weinstein the ‘Ales’ link had become crucial to confirming Hiss’s guilt. Yet trial testimony reveals that Vassiliev himself doubted that identification and sought, unsuccessfully, to avoid its being used in The Haunted Wood. “I never saw a document where Hiss would be called Ales or Ales may be called Hiss. I made a point of that to Allen.”11 Indeed, trial materials showed the co-authors in frequent conflict. Tellingly, Vassiliev accused Weinstein of being “sloppy almost every time he quoted documents relating to Alger Hiss.”12

For Weinstein to reveal a previously unattested cryptonym could also have carried risks. What else might surface to question the co-authors’ credibility or collaboration? By 1999 they were bitter antagonists. Vassiliev threatened to sue Weinstein for theft, complaining that notes for The Haunted Wood had appeared without his knowledge or consent in the revised Perjury. Perhaps Vassiliev had other materials not yet divulged. To include or even allude to the Gorsky List could have opened up a can of worms.

However suspicious, Weinstein’s failure to use or cite the Gorsky List might at a stretch be seen as incompetent oversight. But additional pages from Vassiliev’s transcribed KGB file notes, likewise divulged to bolster his trial case, are likewise omitted from both Perjury and Haunted Wood. One, dated March 15, 1945, is a list of fourteen purportedly “cooperative” persons named by War Production Board official and Communist agent Victor Perlo. Perlo here explicitly says that he has never worked with Alger Hiss––directly contradicting claims in Perjury (rev ed., 125) and The Haunted Wood (39).13

The second item is four sentences from a cable to Moscow by Anatoly Gorsky on March 5, 1945, concerning ‘Ales’, an American agent he wants to contact at the forthcoming San Francisco conference. Ales “was at Yalta conference, then went to Mexico City, but has not yet come back,” writes Gorsky.14 This is from the same cable quoted in Perjury (326)15 and Haunted Wood (268); but these books replace ‘Ales’ with “[Hiss] ... a strong determined ... Communist.” And neither book includes the sentences in the cable that Vassiliev produced in court: Why not? Because they scuttle the identification of ‘Ales’ as Hiss. Ales “has not yet come back,” wrote Gorsky. Yet Hiss had returned to Washington at least two weeks previously, and was certainly there on March 5.16 Furthermore, the cable sentences left out of Perjury and The Haunted Wood directly contradict what those books surmise about the movements, motives, and associates of ‘Ales-cum-Hiss’. In short, the idée fixe that ‘Ales’ was Hiss led to selective editing of a source which, when read in its entirety, would have impelled a careful author to query, check, and then discard that connection.

Thus all the “new” KGB materials Vassiliev provided at the trial to shore up his credibility (Gorksy memo, Perlo list, Gorsky cable extracts), refute the identification of Hiss as ‘Ales’ and undermine the contention he was a spy. All are absent from The Haunted Wood though available to Weinstein, who chose not to use them either there or in the revised Perjury.

4 KGB operational correspondence file 43173 vol. 2(v), pp. 49-55, attached to Alexander Vassiliev to Hartwig, 1 Feb 2002, in Alexander Vassiliev and Frank Cass & Co Ltd, High Court of Justice Queen's Bench Division Claim No. HQ1X03222, Amended Particulars of Claim, Court Documents; reprinted and annotated by John Earl Haynes, Microsoft Word, H-DIPLO, February 6, 2005. The recipient, Sergei Romanovich Savchenko, was then head of the NKGB (then the MGB branch of KI/Committee of Information of the Council of Ministers of the USSR) intelligence service. The list itself is dated December 1948, which cannot have been correct, given its order in the KGB file, information in it not available until 1949, and the chronology affirmed in The Haunted Wood, 296-97. Given the misfits and errors in the Gorsky List noted by Haynes, and the calculated corruption known of other Soviet archival documents, whatever Vassiliev transcribed may well embody deliberate as well as accidental misinformation. Subsequent sources from the High Court trial, in my files, are abbreviated as follows: High Court Documents as CtD, Court Transcripts at CtT. Jury Bundles (materials produced for the jurors) as Ct JB. All cited here were previously posted on H-DIPLO.

13 Ct JB 3: 309A, “A list of persons who according to Raid [Victor Perlo] have been cooperating with the Russian intelligence service apart from those he is working with regularly at present. Dated 15.03.45.”

15 It was the appearance of this extract and others in Perjury that led Vassiliev to complain Weinstein had stolen from him (Vassiliev to Loomis, 30 August 1999, Ct JB 3:284, and my H-DIPLO postings 29 Dec. 2004 and 5 Jan. 2005).

16 Hiss to Sandifer, Feb. 22, 1945; Hiss to Stettinius, March 1 and 3, 1945; Hiss to H. Scherbak, March 5, 1945, Nation al Archives (courtesy of Jeff Kisseloff). These letters can be found at <www.algerhiss.com>

More Comments:

jim matthew crawford -
12/5/2005

Weinstein/Tannenhaus/Buckley seems to be the current triumvirate in the current defense of the status quo regarding the Hiss case. Buckley was full throttle behind Tannenhaus and financed him as he rewrote 'Witness' into a Chambers hagiography. All this because the modern right wing stands upon the false foundation of Alger Hiss' conviction. If you don't believe that, take note of the paroxysms into which they descend whenever anyone challenges the guilt of Alger Hiss. Further, the continuing revelations of the dishonesty surrounding the conduct of that entire case, and of the dissembling artifice of both Hoover and Nixon, lay open the realities that lie behind and beneath the case: the right wing in this country needed a way to regain power, Communism was the hobby horse they chose to ride, and Alger Hiss was the sacrificial victim framed to make the point.

The most important and the most central point here is not all of this discussion about the value of the Sayre testimony, or the accuracy of Soviet memos or of Vassielevsky’s commentaries, but the fact that the typewritten documents were forged, and that Hiss was never allowed to bring his side of that evidence into court. Once that hellish forgery is revealed for what it was, Alger Hiss will be exonerated, the radical right will be exposed for what it really was then, and revealed at last for what it continues to be to this day.
jmc

Lisa X. Pease -
11/20/2005

I disagree. The intellectual poverty seems to come from those who refuse to consider that Hiss was set up for political reasons having nothing to do with his guilt.

Chambers is the last person on earth to whom I would assign credibility, since he's the one who actually admitted to perjury, but wasn't charged. It's shocking to me how purported scholars ignore this most basic and salient fact.

I would suggest readers of these comments consider Haynes' background as a fan of Joe McCarthy and put his comments towards Hiss in the appropriate context.

Bill Heuisler -
5/3/2005

Mr. Sandilands,
Denial is a mind-set that ignores 44 type-written copies of secret State Department files entered in evidence in US District Court in Baltimore. Denial says the documents weren't turned over to a Communist courier who proffered them to the court. Denial says they weren't really typed on the Hiss family typewriter - even though the FBI Lab identified them as being typed on the same instrument as the Hiss applications to Bryn Mawr, Potomac School and Landon for his sons. Denial is what Alger Hiss did when he denied typing them, denied knowing the Communist courier and denied owning the tell-tale typewriter.

In each case, Alger Hiss was forced to admit under oath that his three denials were lies. Why? Because the FBI found the typewriter and a maid named Catlett testified to the courier's meeting with Hiss. Now you might deny it all and blame it on Priscilla Hiss. Or you might deny it all and blame it all on the Communist courier, Chambers.
But, Mr. Sandilands, neither one had original access to those secret State Department papers. Alger Hiss worked for the Far East Affairs division of the State Department and was one of very few men in government who routinely handled such specific and secret papers.

Call him what ever code name you like, but the typewriter convicted him of perjury, and the perjury was about his activity as an active agent for the USSR (the GRU) and about his spying against his own country.
Bill Heuisler

mark safranski -
5/3/2005

Dr. Roger Sandilands wrote:

"It is notable that none of the Hiss detractors seems willing to address or concede the evidently erroneous identification of "Ales" as Hiss. This has been adduced as showing that there is now an "avalanche of evidence" against Hiss."

Eduard Mark, has written on Ales/Hiss issues quite recently and has a quite different conclusion.

Roger James Sandilands -
5/2/2005

It is notable that none of the Hiss detractors seems willing to address or concede the evidently erroneous identification of "Ales" as Hiss. This has been adduced as showing that there is now an "avalanche of evidence" against Hiss.

The recent books and articles that take Hiss's guilt for granted, and go on to indulge in amateur psychology to explain why his defenders are "in denial", are in need of some psycho-analysing of their own.

Roger Sandilands
Tokyo

John Earl Haynes -
5/2/2005

That I disagree thoroughly with Professor Lowenthal’s interpretation of the Gorsky memo is clear from an essay he noted, “Professors of Denial” authored by Harvey Klehr and I. For those interested in the specifics of the Gorsky memo, at: < http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page48.html > one can find images of Vassiliev’s notes on the Gorsky memo, a transcription into printed Russian Cyrillic, a translation into English, an annotated version, and my comments on the memo.

The intellectual poverty of the case for doubts of Hiss’s participation in Soviet espionage in the scholarly work continues to amaze. That otherwise able scholars avert their eyes from new evidence and develop highly selective memories of what long established evidence consists of is astounding.

In 1948 Chambers produced typed and handwritten material that summarized sixty-eight different State Department documents that went through Hiss’s office. The most thorough and scholarly book on the Hiss-Chambers case, Allen Weinstein, _Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case_ (1978 & 1997) and the also comprehensively researched _Whittaker Chambers: a Biography_ (1997) by Sam Tanenhaus discussed this material at length. Documents examiners of both the prosecution and the Hiss’s defense concluded that the hand-written material was in Alger Hiss’s own hand and the typed material were done on the Hiss family typewriter of the mid-1930s. In addition to the typed and handwritten material, Chambers also produced microfilm made by his espionage network of documents that Hiss had given him in early 1938. Three of the documents on the film had Hiss’s handwritten initials on them and the stamp from the small State Department office where Hiss worked.

Chambers, of course, testified to his personal knowledge of Hiss as a Soviet source. So did Hede Gompertz, like Chambers, a defector from Soviet espionage operations. Gompertz testimony has most recently been corroborated by material in Hungarian archives. See Mária.Schmidt’s “Noel Field -- The American Communist at the Center of Stalin’s East European Purge: From the Hungarian Archives,”-_American Communist History_3, no. 2 (December 2004). Chambers’ testimony about his role as a courier and manager of an espionage apparatus was earlier corroborated by the confessions of other members of his spy network (who knew Chambers but not Hiss), including Julian Wadleigh (a second Chambers’ source at the Department of State), Felix Inslerman (a photographer for the network), and Franklin Victor Reno, a secret Communist and statistician at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds near Baltimore where the U.S. Army tested new weaponry. Others corroborated Hiss’s status as a Communist, such as Nathaniel Weyl, a member of the secret Communist caucus centered around the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. The deciphered Soviet cablegrams of the Venona project and the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley further confirmed the status of most of those identified by Chambers as involved in covert Communist work.

Weinstein, _Perjury_ and Tanenhaus’ _Whittaker Chambers_ are the only scholarly quality, comprehensive books on the Hiss-Chambers matter. Others have attempted comprehensive, scholarly book vindicating Hiss but all such projects have collapsed in the face of the weight of the accumulated evidence. No such book exists because it is simply not possible to write it. Instead, we have the continued irresponsible campaign of isolating some small aspect of the Hiss case, nit-picking it for any ambiguities when isolated from the rest of the evidence, and then falsely proclaiming that this ambiguity achieved by artificial isolation somehow overcomes the weight of the other evidence, evidence that is deliberately ignored. It is a scholastically foolish stance.

One sign, I hope, that such foolishness is passing is the publication of G. Edward White’s _Alger Hiss’ Looking-Glass Wars_ (2004) that accepts Hiss’s guilt and moves on to the less studied question of how and why he managed to convince so many people for so long that he was innocent.

John Earl Haynes

mark safranski -
5/2/2005

" Searches in KGB archives by Russian authorities a year after the Soviet collapse found no evidence that Hiss had ever been a Soviet agent. As other intelligence archives remained closed, this exoneration is persuasive but not conclusive."

This "exoneration" by the KGB would not have been entirely persuasive even if Hiss had been alleged to have been an NKVD agent instead of an agent of the GRU.

In the era when Hiss was active as a spy the Soviets ran separate agent networks in the United States through the foreign intelligence directorates of the NKVD, the GRU, the Comintern, the underground branch of the CPUSA and, during WWII, AMTORG. The KGB would not have had a " master-list" of agents at the time or in their archives for agents who would be responsible to military intelligence or the CC of the CPSU which dealt with " Party to Party " matters.

In addition to the compartmentalization aspect there are other aspects to consider:

a) " Outing" Hiss as a spy really wouldn't help the successor agencies to the KGB much in terms of their own recruitment efforts but standing fast by Hiss' denial would. The CIA does not confirm sources for the same good reasons.

b) The Soviet archives are not like the National Archives. They are an unholy mess.

Moreover, Stalin maintained a personal archive separate from government or party archives for items of high interest. This archive was at the disposal of Beria and Khrushchev for some time and cannot be considered to have been left untouched.

c) Soviet controllers and their adminstrators in the USSR had their work and agency severely disrupted by the bloody purges run by Yezhov in 1937.

No, an irrefutable smoking gun for the guilt of Alger Hiss that would confirm his role as a spy that would convince even the most rabid of the dwindling band of Hiss partisans has not yet been revealed and may never be.

For most historians though, who are not true believers, the available, extensive evidence has long been sufficient to weigh in on the guilt of Alger Hiss.